1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to spectroscopic methods for the analysis of blood components, and particularly to a method of detecting thalassemia by optical analysis of blood components that uses fluorescent spectroscopy to determine measured ratios of intensity maxima between tryptophan and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, tyrosine and tryptophan, and the normal form of porphyrin and the basic form of porphyrin.
2. Description of the Related Art
Thalassemia is a form of inherited autosomal recessive blood disorder. In thalassemia, the disease is caused by the weakening and destruction of red blood cells. Thalassemia is caused by variant or missing genes that affect how the body makes hemoglobin, Hemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. People with thalassemia make less hemoglobin and fewer circulating red blood cells than normal, which results in mild or severe anemia. Thalassemia can cause significant complications, including pneumonia, iron overload, bone deformities and cardiovascular illness.
Normally, hemoglobin is composed of four protein chains, two α and two β globin chains arranged into a heterotetramer. In thalassemia, patients have defects in either the α or β globin chain (unlike sickle-cell disease, which produces a specific mutant form of β globin), causing production of abnormal red blood cells. The thalassemias are classified according to which chain of the hemoglobin molecule is affected. In α thalassemias, production of the α globin chain is affected, while in β thalassemia production of the β globin chain is affected.
The β globin chains are encoded by a single gene on chromosome 11; α globin chains are encoded by two closely linked genes on chromosome 16. Thus, in a normal person with two copies of each chromosome, there are two loci encoding the β chain, and four loci encoding the α chain. Deletion of one of the α loci has a high prevalence in people of African or Asian descent, making them more likely to develop a thalassemias. β Thalassemias are not only common in Africans, but also in Greeks and Italians.
The most common method of detection of thalassemia involves performance of a complete blood count (CBC), followed by electrophoreses and molecular diagnosis, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and genotyping using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This process, however, requires the usage of highly specialized equipment, thus making detection both expensive and difficult.
Thus, a method of detecting thalassemia by optical analysis of blood components solving the aforementioned problems is desired.